• Astro Fighter Sunred 29
• Cencoroll
• Bakemonogatari 8
• Chebrushka Arere 3
• Nyan Koi 5
• Health with Little Red Riding Hood
• Eve no Jikan 6
• G.A. Geijutsuka Art Design Class 6
• Kinnikuman 2
• Sora no Manimani Special 1
• MnF Kaiketsu Zorori 5

This looks like a lot, but there are many short pieces.

Cencoroll was a nice surprise. It’s a 25 minute movie about a boy (and a girl) and his combat blob. I’d heard people complain that it’s unintelligible, but while it doesn’t spell everything out in excruciating detail it seems fairly understandable. It’s nice not having everything explained ad nauseum for once. And the art is quite nice.

Health with Little Red Riding Hood is a strange little 5 minute low budget piece which takes place entirely within the body of a depressed wolf.  I’m not sure if this is an actual PSA or just a student piece that looks like one.

I should probably save the Kinnikuman for when we don’t have any Kaiketsu Zorori available.

1. Astro Fighter Sunred 28 (S2-2)
2. Eve no Jikan 5
3. Sora no Manimani 10
4. Bakemonogatari 7
5. Kobato 4
6. Chebrushka Arere 2
7. Aoi Bungaku 1
8. Nyan Koi 4
9. Higepiyo 22
10. Geijutsu Art Design Class 5
11. Majime ni Funifuni Kaiketsu Zorori 4

This looks like way too much, but a lot of these are very short. Chebrushka Arere continues to be cute enough that at only 3 minutes I’ll throw it in.

Aoi Bungaku is a new entry, and is very interesting – it’s basically the classics of Japanese modern(?) literature, animated.  It starts with Ningen Shikkaku, which is a fine, fine choice. The animation is excellent, as you’d expect from Madhouse, but unfortunately the adaptation doesn’t live up to what I remember and makes it a bit too much Catcher in the Rye.  I’ll let MoeSucks elaborate, since I’m too lazy.

I’m still quite happy with Sunred, Eve no Jikan, and Kobato (which rides that really fine line between cute fun and schlock hard).  Bakemonogatari is still my favorite – so much so I don’t even care if the other people appreciate it or not, though this ep was extremely accessible.  Arararagi-kun is such a deer in headlights.

1. Cheburashka Arere #1
   Kids’ show about an alligator who gets a mutant monkey/mouse/koala(?) in a box of oranges and names it Cheburashka because it falls a lot. When it falls over it says ‘Arere?’. And that’s pretty much it.  Cute designs, but this is probably skewed too young.
2. Eve no Jikan #4
   Very good ep about an ugly first generation robot in a world of too human androids.
3. Nyan Koi #3
   Still okay high school comedy romance but now it’s really starting to veer too much into harem.
4. Bakemonogatari #6
   Still my favorite show. Senjogahara is amazing in this ep as the psycho girlfriend, and the ending is quite an unexpected pleasure.
5. G.A. Geijutsu Art Design Class #4
6. Spice and Wolf 2 #12
   End of series 2. Well at least Lawrence said it, but since this is 4 of 9 books of course things are left stupidly unresolved. And as this goes on Lawrence gets more interesting and Horo gets less.
7. Kobato #3
   Visually great, still fun. The good deed feels less forced this time, some plot is actually kicking in.
8. Kinnukuman #1
   Since there’s no new Kaiketsu Zorori I threw this in this week. Real old school Stupid (with a capital S) gag anime that had everyone laughing since it’s just so ridiculous (and dated).
9. Higepiyo #21
10. Sora no Manimani #9

Summary: Supernatural Waiting for Godot
Based on: 5 eps
Series Info: at Anime News Network

Everyone in Bakemonogatari is damaged and some kind of supernatural being (hence the name of the show, which you could translate as Monster Stories), but this is not as glamorous as you might expect from recent fiction and anime. This is the best writing I’ve seen in an anime for years and the best visuals since Mononoke. The Blu-ray sales for the first collection are through the roof, and I’m not surprised at all.

It is also very tricksy – it puts up a front of the usual cliches then subverts them. This is technically a harem anime with a nebbish male and plenty of fanservice. In addition, the guy is a (ex-)vampire, which is the most glamorous of all supernatural beings, right? Let’s take a look at these.

This is in some sense a harem anime; everyone but the lead nebbish male (Koyomi Araragi) and the detached  sensei-figure are cute girls with the usual buffet selection (princess, loli, tomboy, class rep, exotic blonde…).  But they’re all so damaged it’s hard to feel there’s the usual shallow competition for the hapless doof.  The beautiful princess-like lead girl, Senjougahara, confesses  soon enough, but she’s so emotionally damaged and scary that this makes poor Araragi-kun more wary than happy even as he lusts after her. She’s beyond tsundere and into yandere, so ‘I Love You’ is more a declaration of war.

There is plenty of fanservice – the series starts out with a panty shot in the first five seconds. But it seems to be smirking at you – here you go, how do you like this, you shallow bastard? Happy now? Here’s the beautiful girl naked, but what she’s saying is making your manhood wither.

The lead nebbish (Araragi-kun) is a vampire, which is the most glamorous of all monsters, right? Well no, he’s an ex-vampire. And his single talent is wanting to rescue other monsters. But he’s not a pushover, even though he’s not too bright – he’s perfectly willing to punch a schoolgirl in the guts and knock her out. He lusts after Senjougahara, but it’s not the mere idea of sex that frightens him unbelievably as it usually does with the emasculated lead, but the fact that she really is a very scary girl.

Finally, this series isn’t afraid to spend an entire episode in a (visually arresting) park with two and three characters just talking.  This is where I can’t recommend it to just everyone – if you need action you are going to be disappointed. It plays with various visual effects and angles you won’t see in other anime, but it may still be too boring for some people just because it really is just people talking, like Waiting for Godot.

That’s why I’m currently a little torn about including this in the weekly showing, because while it’s visually stunning and has plenty of fanservice and uses various tricks to cover up the lack of action I wonder how much it still bores some of the other people – but I love it. You owe it to yourself to at least try a few episodes.

This is the winter of our discontent…  I’m actually going to fold Fall 2009 in to here, because while I think Winter is generally better than Fall was, Fall had two decent shows including one of my favorites.

So far so good:

• Bakemonogatari – This has the best visuals (reminiscent of Mononoke) and easily the best writing of any anime in the past couple years.  It will bore anyone who can’t appreciate those to tears.
• Eve no Jikan – Neat little six episode show about the possible societal impact of humanoid robots, and what if you couldn’t necessarily tell humans from robots? This is obviously a more polished followup to Mizu no Kotoba.
• Kimi ni Todoke – Your shoujo romance for the season. Like Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge (The Wallflower) but not so stupidly over the top. More believable and more touching.
• Kobato – A CLAMP anime in the Angelic Layer and Card Captor Sakura style. This is just flat out adorable if you can handle them shoe-horning some touching scene in at the end.
• Tentai Senshi Sunred Season 2 – I loved season 1, and this carries right on in the same style. It’s based on a 4 panel gag manga about a superhero and the evil organization he’s fighting. Completely tongue in cheek examination of what life as a superhero or evil villain is like when you have day to day concerns to worry about. And it’s written for adults.

Could be Worse:

• Aoi Bungaku – the classics of Japanese modern(?) literature, animated.  It starts with Ningen Shikkaku, which is a fine, fine choice. The animation is excellent, as you’d expect from Madhouse, but unfortunately the adaptation doesn’t live up to what I remember and makes it a bit too much Catcher in the Rye.  I’ll let MoeSucks elaborate, since I’m too lazy. Will watch ep 2, though.
• Higepiyo – fun little 5-minute shorts about a very manly chick by the Ebichu author.  Not nearly as risque, and the same sense of absurdity. The little moments where Higepiyo gets a dumb blissed out look on his face and makes this utterly content ‘Huuuuuuuu’ sound just make it for me.
• Nyan Koi – Okay, this is mostly standard high school romance, but while the opening animation would make you think this is just fanservice there’s almost none of it in the actual anime. High school boy gets cursed by a cat god and can suddenly speak to cats, who abuse him mercilessly. The lead girl is too oblivious for this to really be harem anime, which is a plus.
• Seitokai no Ichizon – High school comedy.  Closer to Pani Poni Dash than Azumanga Daioh.

Forget it:

• Kampfer – I was expecting Canaan, but it’s Ranma 1/2, Sekirei, and Kashimashi in a blender and puree. Boy who turns into a big-breasted combat maid – and of course the girl he loves is in love with his female form and doesn’t know they’re the same person. The usual harem cast.
• Kiddy Girl-and – As far as I can tell this is just a Kiddy Grade sequel.
• Seiken no Blacksmith – Generic fanservice fantasy. This season’s Zero no Tsukaima.
• Sora no Otoshimono – Big-breasted compliantly dumb wish fulfilling angel falls into life of nebbish loser and fulfills all his fantasies. Sounds familiar? This actually has a moment of promise when she obeys his wish to be ruler of the world by killing everyone else on the planet, but then they call a mulligan on it. I would be very surprised if second ep didn’t have another dark skinned angel showing up.

More of the Same:

• Darker than Black – Ryuusei no Gemini
• Dragonball Kai
• Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu – Purezza
• Queen’s Blade S2
  

Friday’s Show:

• Higepiyo 20
• Eve no Jikan 3
• Nyan Koi 2
• Bakemonogatari 5
• To Aru Kagaku no Railgun 2
• Kobato 2
• Spice and Wolf S2 11
• Kampfer 1
• Majime ni Funifuni Kaiketsu Zorori 3

Higepiyo continues to be good, dumb short fun.  Nyan Koi and To Aru Kagaku no Railgun are in there just for the comedy romance quotient and could be dropped at any time, probably Railgun first. Kobato is a CLAMP joint from the Angelic Layer team, and if you can put up with the shoehorning in of a touching bit at the end (like He-man) it’s quite pleasant.

Bakemonogatari continues to be one of my favorites, though I’m not sure if it’s boring the other people. More on this next post.

Kampfer was crap, and not what I was expecting. It’s like Sekirei except instead of big breasted Pokemon, the guy turns into his own big breasted combat maid. That won’t be back.

Finally, Kaiketsu Zorori continues to be lots of fun. It’s emphatically for kids, but a well written kids show is a good guilty pleasure, and often superior to a mediocre show written for teens or adults.

I  have to admit, I’ve been fairly burned out on anime lately – it seems to be getting worse and worse, and I’m not sure if that’s just me getting older or anime actively getting more cynical and pandering. I’m leaning towards the latter based on:

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/10/18/queens-blade-sexy-nipples/ (NSFW)
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/06/26/fight-ippatsu-juuden-chan-pure-ero-anime/ (NSFW)
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/10/18/seikon-no-qwaser-breast-sucking-bdsm-ero-anime-preview/ (NSFW)

and then the parade of usual crap like Kanokon and Kampfer.  I’m not opposed to sex, but it’s just boring when it’s the raison d’être of a story (something Laurell K. Hamilton never figured out either).

In short, I can no longer stomach watching the first episode of every anime, no matter how bad, which was the original premise of this blog.  However…  even if the odds are lower you can still find the occasional gem.  I’ve been enjoying ‘Kimi ni Todoke’ as a fairly touching shoujo anime, and next post talks about the good stuff. I’ve moving to a more abbreviated format with shorter summaries, preserving the core mission of ‘what’s the good stuff?’

Friday’s show:

• Detroit Metal City 12
• Michiko and Hatchin 4
• Nodame Cantabile Paris 6
• Astro Fighter Sunred 1
• Skip Beat 4
• Kemeko DX 1
• Hyakko 5
• Soul Eater 18
• Kaiketsu Zorori 20

The final ep of DMC was suitably epic. We’ll be sad to see it go, but replacing it with Astro Fighter Sunred, another 15 minute gag show that came out of nowhere. Kemeko DX really freaked people out (as it seems to be intended to do), but mostly in a good way I think.

This was a really solid show – not a single disappointing episode (Hyakko and especially  Soul Eater can be a bit variable).

This Friday’s show:

1. Detroit Metal City 11
2. Michiko and Hatchin 3
3. Kannagi 1
4. Nodame Cantabile Paris 5
5. One Outs 1
6. Hyakko 4
7. Skip Beat 3
8. Kaisetsu Zorori 19

Michiko and Hatchin, Nodame, and Zorori are the anchors and Michiko was probably the best thing shown. Hyakko and DMC are the comedy relief, as is Skip Beat to some extent. Kannagi and One Outs are there since I try to make sure we watch at least one ep of the not completely horrible new stuff. I can’t really see showing more of either unless we’re short.

For the people who asked, this is not a big showing. Only me and four friends.

Summary: Baseball as a gambling vehicle
Based on: 3 eps
Info at: Anime News Network (pic from there, too)

Note: This is a guest review by Brendan Speer.

When found out about One Outs, I was very excited.   ‘Finally’, I thought to myself, ‘An Akagi where I’m familiar with the sport!  This is going to be great!’  Plus I can pretend that the Lycaons are the Cubs.  Thusly, I waited for 2 weeks for it to be subbed; begging and cajoling friends to do it for me.

Then I sat down and watched the first episode.

And I was really disappointed.  I figured out that one of the great things about Akagi is that I don’t know the first damn thing about Mahjong.  I could really follow Akagi play without the little nagging doubt in the back of my mind.   The prospect of an 120 kph (75 mph) pitcher with no breaking balls being able to psych his opponents out that much introduces an element of that ‘This is ridiculous!’ feeling.

And yet, I’ve watched 3 episodes, and will probably watch the fourth tonight.   First off, it’s still compelling to watch.  I _still_ want to see Toua beat his first challenger at One Outs Baseball.  Even if I know the prospect is preposterous.

What Akagi and One Outs do differently from traditional ’sports’ anime, like Hikaru no Go and Prince of Tennis, is that the latter play like ‘Japanese youth introduction to sport <insert sport here>’.   Prince of Tennis will spend half an episode talking about the Buggy Whip Shot, or try and illustrate the difference between an All-Arounder and Baseline Retriever.  One Outs doesn’t do this.  Instead the sport is only a vehicle to tell the story, quite well I might add.  You know what’s going to happen, you always know who’s going to win.  However, between the Narrator, the Music, and the situations, you’re still compelled to keep watching.   How will Akagi play out of this?  Will Toua get hit?  It’s quite ingenious.

As Ron has referenced in his paragraph, the character designed have been tarted up for the female audience.  In Akagi, the character designed were basically ugly.   Distinctive, and stylish, but unattractive.  The unattractive, gritty style fit Akagi well.  In One Outs both Kojima and Toua are pretty-boy anime arch-types, the former being the squared-jawed Japanese traditionalist, and the latter having that punky bishonen going for him.  Even the first opposing team’s pitcher has an Kaneda-like street punk handsomeness to him.

The first two episodes were very Akagi like.   Very slow paced, building suspense.   The third introduced another element, of the Owner of the team.  I’ll try not to give away too much, but I like the way this is turning from the Akagi formula.   I suspect when I go back to rewatch something like this, however, I’ll still turn to the Mahjong master.

This Friday’s showing:

1. Zenryoku Usagi 11
2. Detroit Metal City 9
3. Yozakura Quartet 1
4. Natsume Yuujinchou 13
5. Nodame Cantabile Paris 3
6. Mouryou no Hako 2
7. Tetsuwan Birdy Decode 13
   
8. Skip Beat 1
9. Slayers Revolution 13

Three series ended this week – Natsume Yuujinchou, Birdy Decode, and Slayers Revolution.  Birdy was decent adventure and managed a decent not quite happy ending, but Natsume will be missed the most. I’m glad there’s another series coming. Slayers ending was sort of a mercy, since it’s much more fun when it’s just goofing around as it does at the start of a season instead of trying to be dramatic at the end of the season.

Skip Beat was pretty decent. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a good shojo comedy. I’ll show at least another ep. On the other hand Mouryou no Hako totally cratered. It went from creepy horror to relentless padding. Seriously, when you spend the entire second half of the show just driving around lost while dropping names you are doing the worst (and most boring) kind of exposition possible. The entire room was yawning.

I need to get in the habit of updating this one more often, I missed at week. But here was Friday’s showing:

1. Zenryoku Usagi 10
2. Detroit Metal City 8
3. Michiko and Hatchin 1
4. Nodame Cantabile Paris 2
5. Kamen no Maid Guy 12
6. Kaiketsu Zorori 17
7. Tetsuwan Birdy Decode 12
8. Natsume Yuujinchou 12
9. Slayers Revolution 12

Kamen no Maid Guy ended with a total whimper. Slayers Revolution and Tetsuwan Birdy Decode were both visibly padding themselves out for the final ep, though Birdy at least tossed you a few bones. Michiko and Hatchin was pretty well received – hey, more Bebop is good. Nodame and DMC were of course awesome.

This blog is about anime, so I swear not to go off topic like this often, but I really wanted to give recognition to a game that’s extremely generous to the user – something you might appreciate as a busy adult.

Saints Row 2, just released for XBox 360 and PS3 (and soon the PC) is a dichotomy – it’s a Grand Theft Auto type game, perhaps even the most cynically derivative. The plot is total throwaway trash, a  complete gangbanger young male power fantasy. Reviews of the game have been decent, but thanks to the poverty of narrative it has been mostly written off as an ‘okay’ game.  But I think it’s actually a better game than Grand Theft Auto IV, because it goes to great lengths to make sure you have fun and not get in your way. For a game that’s about you being a total dick, it’s very polite, almost obsequious.

There are three types of missions – plot missions, optional activities, optional collection. The collection is the usual ‘50 hidden CDs are scattered around the city’ type thing. The plot missions advance the plot, obviously. But the optional activities, which could be throwaway, are actually what I consider the meat of the game. Unlike GTA IV or other games that include mini-games, the primary consideration here seems to be ‘is it fun?’ For instance, Septic Avenger has you hijacking a pumping truck and devaluing property values by spraying everything with human waste while your driver keeps up a steady stream of comments like ‘Now that’s a dirty cop!’ after you take one down with a high powered fecal jet. Utterly juvenile, yes, but a blast to play.

Trail Blazing has you donning an asbestos suit, setting yourself on fire, and racing through checkpoints on an ATV while setting hapless pedestrians on fire for bonus time. Mayhem asks you to do a certain amount of property damage in a given time – and the game gives you infinite rocket launcher or shotgun or assault rifle ammo so you don’t have to worry about anything but survival and damage. There are many more. And if you beat these activities, you get real, very useful rewards like reduced vehicle damage, infinite weapon ammo, or infinite sprinting time. It makes them fun and then rewards you for doing them.

The customization is insane. You can:

• Create your character with a staggering array of option sliders. Male, female, fat, skinny, hispanic, black,  caucasian (or a mix!) – there are at least EIGHT separate sliders just to customize the lips.
• Full body tattooing – each arm separately, each leg, chest, stomach, upper and lower back. The game lets you treat tattoos as clothes and change them at will. Not realistic, but nice.
• Six character voices (3 male, 3 female) and then all your speaking parts are done in all six voices.
• The array of clothing is almost overwhelming – at least 500 items, and you can choose the colors, whether you wear your hats forward, backwards, right, left, etc. You can even buy lip piercings.
• All ‘movies’ are rendered in engine, with all your customizations, so ‘you’ are you through the whole game.

There’s just a spirit of generosity everywhere – it’s as if the designers actually asked ‘how can we make this not annoying?’ That should be fundamental for every game, but it’s hardly ever done in practice – Super Mario Galaxy or Geometry Wars 2 are the only examples I can think of recently. Hell, the guys at LucasArts seem to have been actively trying to make Force Unleashed even more annoying (‘Disk access just for the menu? Sweeeeeeet!’). They probably weren’t, of course, they just weren’t considering it at all – and it shows.

Here’s how nice the game is:

• Save anywhere, any time, even on console versions.
• Missions are generously checkpointed. If you start a mission, drive across town to a nightclub and accidentally shoot a guy at close range with the rocket launcher (just hypothetically you understand), killing yourself, you will restart just outside the nightclub, after the drive.
• Missions are generously signposted. If you have to run through a maze of a building, there are several waypoints.
• I didn’t run into a single plot mission that was stupidly frustratingly designed. Sure I died or failed several times, but it was always my fault. Some of the highest level optional activities are very hard to complete in time, but that’s fair.
• You get homies who do missions with you and are basically cannon fodder to distract the bad guys. If they die, it’s as easy as running up to them and pressing a button to revive them.
• Redo old missions at any time through a clever ‘newspaper clippings’ gimmick, and redo any level of any completed activity by going back to the site.
• If you like the music you hear, you can go to a music store, ‘buy’ any music you heard on the radio, and create your own music station.
• There are plenty of bases you can win/buy throughout the city, and you can customize how they look.
• You can customize how your gang looks, how they fight, and even your own fighting style.
• I never felt constrained much by money or ammo. Both were sufficient, but not so plentiful as to rob you of motivation early on. Though by the end of the game you’re rolling in cash, which is as it should be.
• Buttons do what you expect. I can’t emphasize this enough. The best example is that the back button brings up the map and the start button brings up the menu. But if you press the map button while already in the menu, it closes the menu and gives you the map, and vice versa.  That’s obvious, but only one game in a hundred would be that considerate in practice. Most are oblivious sociopaths.

The big takeaway from all this is that I never felt I was doing something stupid and boring just because the designers or implementers were lazy. If I thought something would be cool, I could probably do it. Read that again. How many games can you say that about? I just can’t emphasize enough how amazing it is to play a game that respects you enough that it doesn’t waste your time at all.

Of course I have some complaints. The plot, as mentioned, is trash. Ultimately I know I’ll remember GTA IV’s plot more than Saints Row 2’s (hell, I can barely remember SR2’s plot even now). But I also know SR2 was more fun than GTA IV.  The attack helicopter activities are also a little squirrelly because the copter controls are too loose, but those are optional except for the last plot mission, which is pretty forgiving.

I’m sure I’ll get a bunch of comments about how I’m weak for wanting the game to be too ‘easy’, but that’s not what I want. I don’t mind hard. Hard games forcing you to think carefully about what you’re doing and show some skill are great, and if you just run around randomly firing at things in SR2 you’ll die fast. Games that are hard because the people who made it were lazy are something else entirely. I beat games like Contra, (original) Prince of Persia and Battletoads (okay that’s a lie, I never played BT) back in the day and I no longer have the time to waste on stuff that insta-kills you for no good reason.

So thank you, Volition, for actually respecting the player for once (even while insulting my intelligence), and for making SR2 a lot less buggy than SR1. I can wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone who doesn’t mind the crudity of the subject matter, and based on my informal polling more people will end up actually finishing SR2 than GTA IV.  It’s sad that I would feel compelled to write this because I’m so stunned that a game isn’t user hostile, but that’s the state of the industry.

This came about because I just finished Yakushiji Ryoko’s Case Files, which is a great example of this. Card Captor Sakura is another.

Basically it refers to a series where the first several episodes are aggressively, even boringly, formulaic, then they hit you with the real plot.  CLAMP stories are perhaps the best examples of this – Card Captor Sakura, Tsubasa, XXXholic, Rayearth, etc., but it also seems to be a requirement for most magical girl shows like Pretty Cure. They lull you in, then wham.

I’m not sure if this is exactly good or bad – it’s certainly bad during the forumlaic setup where you’re thinking ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, she has to capture another card’, but in the case of something like Ryoko’s Case Files where the last third of the show suddenly turns into a sprawling epic where they bring in all sorts of bits from the early episodes that you’d thought were just throwaway, it’s actually kind of fulfilling.

This is felt much more strongly in shoujo anime, so I’m going to say this is linked to shoujo cliche – the first several eps are designed to lull the viewer into a sense of familiarity and security before they can get into the real plot.

In the future, when people ask me why I’m cranky about anime, I’m just going to send them to this music video. Warning: not exactly safe for work and the audio will make you want to burn your ears out with a red hot poker.

I fling this word around like monkeys fling poo, so I guess it’s incumbent on me to offer a definition other than ‘I know it when I see it.’ I realize it’s very subjective. To me, pandering is where somebody said ‘okay, how can we make this more appealing to pathetic nerds’  even when it doesn’t come naturally out of the context of the show. If it makes sense for the show, then okay. It all boils down to is it calculatedly gratuitous?

You might consider Hellsing’s gun porn, ultraviolence, and style over substance to be pandering, but I get the feeling that Hirano (the manga author) really, truly, loves this stuff and is just writing what he thinks is goddamn cool, so it’s not pandering. This is what he loves, there’s no compromise of principle.

To me (and you may legitimately disagree) Horo’s omnipresent nudity in Wolf and Spice is less pandering than the crotch shots in Strike Witches because in Wolf and Spice the nudity is treated like it’s nothing – just another outfit, no lecherous loving pans over insanely detailed flesh. Whereas in Strike Witches it seems like the guys writing the show had the crotch shots as their primary directive and they show up at the most ridiculous times – rubbed in your face, so to speak. You can tell they consider this the primary selling point of the show.

Lucky Star isn’t bad once you get past the stultifyingly boring first episodes, but the character of Konata is too obviously calculated to appeal to pathetic otaku guys. Pani Poni Dash is generally okay except when they throw a completely gratuitous bromide in your face – and even worse make it a pull-out pan with sparkly highlights to rub it in your face! Shows like Akiba-chan, about maid doll girls in Akihabara, are entirely cynical ploys. Hell, anything with ‘Akiba’ in the name, period.

Other things are harder for me to pin down. Akamatsu’s Negima! has an unprecedented buffet of girls that’s undeniably extreme pandering, yet the plot and dialogue is less pathetically desperate than his previous Love Hina.  As above, some people see Wolf and Spice’s nude wolf-girl scenes and go ‘Holy crap, where did this come from’ and I can see that – to me it flows naturally when you involve a fertility goddess, but that’s just gut feel and I can’t objectively argue against it.

Summary: Action magic/drama in Young King Ours/Square-Enix style.
Based on: 2 episodes
Series Summary: at Anime News Network (picture stolen as well)

Okay, so this one has me conflicted after 2 eps. I’m going to tell you why you shouldn’t like it, then why you should.

First, it’s utterly typical of a style you find in Young King Ours magazine, which I subscribe to, and anything Square-Enix sponsors. An adolescent male appeal with violence, sexual undercurrents, and an emphasis on fighting and sheer coolness over plot. Of course there’s always magic/psychic powers involved, lots of fighting and explosions, and a young guy who’s sort of helpless (but not a totally weak despicable dork, thank god) but turns out to be the only way the world can be saved once his powers can be trained up. World Embryo is the epitome of this. So when I see it my reaction is to go ‘meh’.

On the other hand, given the formula setup, the characters in this are relatively well done, likeable, and believable (minus the loli teacher). It certainly delivers the action. I can’t fault the character design or animation or music. The heroine (?) out-Rei’s Rei for being white-haired autistic savant, but since the hero’s not even slightly romantically attracted to her (so far) that’s tolerable. The most eye-rolling thing here is that everyone believes in psychic powers but not magic, though they have a Justification for this.

So what am I saying? I’m not sure yet, but if Yozakura Quartet drops the ball this could be my action show for the season.

Summary: shojo Bleach
Based on: 1 episode
Series Info: at Anime News Network (pic shamelessly stolen too)

For some reason this starts out with a hugely boring chunk of exposition about how the half-human half-demon town came into existence, which wouldn’t even need to be explained if you thought your viewers had two brain cells to rub together. The basic plot is about a town where humans and youkai (demons) co-exist, and the quartet is a group that hunts down bad guys. Think Geobreeders, Phantom Quest Corp, or Ghost Sweeper Mikami. The setup is pretty standard.

But once you get past that, I rather like this. It continues the trend of merging of shojo (girls’) and shounen (boys’) genres, and reminds me of nothing so much as a slightly more girly Bleach before Bleach jumped the shark. I absolutely love the character designs, especially Kotoha.

This could easily end up in the crapper if it just milks the premise as stated and turns into harem anime, but for now I’m absolutely grabbing the second ep.

This one is related to ‘rpg to anime sucks‘. It’s just as easy to remember – any anime based on a hentai (porn) game sucks. Which should be obvious, because it almost inevitably means harem and/or buffet of girls and usually school syndrome and of course an unlikeable nebbish male lead. And the female characters are even more one-dimensional and annoying than usual – and really, who wants to put up with all that if you can’t even have sex with them (since the anime are invariably pg-rated)?

Some of the hall of failure include:

• Comic Party
• Fate/Stay Night
• Kanon
• Kimi ga Nozomu Ein
• School Days
  
• Shinkyoku Soukai Polyphonica
• To Heart (and To Heart 2)
• Tsukihime
• Utawarerumono

And some horrific anime I can’t even remember the name of about a battleship powered by the main character’s semen. (Brendan S reminded me that this is Lime-iro Senkitan).

These are usually pretty easy to spot – are there gratuitously too many different types of girls (especially an annoying loli) and a plot that seems to be an afterthought? Does the main goal seem to be to get you to lust after one of the female chars rather than involve you in the story? Unfortunately, manga seems to be headed this way too, so I mistakenly identified Sekirei as one of these even though it isn’t. Rosario to Vampire fits here too.

School Days is perhaps the most interesting of these – it knew it was based on a vapid porn game, so it took the most horrific of the game paths and rubbed it in your face, and made the main character to pathetically weak you couldn’t possibly like him (I hope).

I love console RPGs unreasonably. There’s something soothing about a formulaic dialogue heavy old-school RPG like the Tales games that just appeal to me.

Sadly, every single anime based on these is formulaic boring crap. Take the recent Tales of the Abyss or the Star Ocean 2 anime. I liked those games a lot, but I couldn’t even sit through two eps of the anime. And I can’t think of a single counterexample (and don’t even say the Final Fantasy VII movies).

The least bad I can think of so far is Mahoujin Guruguru.

Here’s the list of failure so far, and I’m sure I’m missing quite a few:

• Ar Tonelico (OVA)
  
• Arc the Lad
• Blue Dragon
• Chrono Trigger (OVA)
  
• Final Fantasy Unlimited
• Idolm@ster: Xenoglossia
• Night Wizard
• Persona 3
• Ragnarok Online
• Suikoden: Demon Century (OVA)
  
• Tales of the Abyss
• Tales of Symphonia
• Tower of Druaga
  
• Wild Arms
• Wizardry (OVA)
  
• World Destruction
• Xenosaga

Not included here are anime based on porn adventure games like Tsukihime or Utawarerumono – that’s something else.  Nor do I include real RPGs to anime, like Record of Lodoss War.